Tony Blair is due to hold separate talks with Sinn Féin and DUP delegations led by the Rev Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams next week, as the British prime minister prepares a keynote speech to be delivered in Northern Ireland later this month.
Officials from the DUP and Sinn Féin, which is staging its ardfheis in Dublin in a week's time, were yesterday trying to arrange their diaries so that Mr Adams and Dr Paisley could hold Downing Street talks with Mr Blair, to be held most likely next Wednesday.
The British and Irish governments have laid down an effective deadline of the end of this year for re-establishing devolution but hope that by April, when the next Independent Monitoring Commission report is published, the foundations for making real progress will be established.
A London source described next week's meetings with the DUP and Sinn Féin as part of the preparatory process for Mr Blair's Northern Ireland speech.
British officials have been flagging this speech as a keynote address similar to Mr Blair's "acts of completion" speech at the Belfast Harbour Commissioners in October 2002, when he insisted political progress could be made only by the IRA decommissioning and ending activity.
The main focus of his address this time is expected to be on policing and powersharing: in seeking to wrest commitments from Sinn Féin to endorse the PSNI, and from the DUP to fully share power with Sinn Féin in a reinstated Northern Executive and Assembly.
"In the same way that the prime minister in his Harbour Commissioners speech detailed what needed to be done to make political progress, he will be providing an overview of where we are and where we need to get to in his end of February speech," the senior London source said.
Meanwhile, the British and Irish governments continue to work behind the scenes to persuade loyalist paramilitaries to follow on the actions of the IRA last year by decommissioning and declaring their armed campaigns over.
While political representatives of the UDA yesterday ruled out any imminent standing down by the loyalist organisation, official sources said efforts to achieve the effective disbandment of these groups were "heading in the right direction".
Speculation of such announcements were heightened yesterday with the disclosure that President Mary McAleese's husband, Martin, held another meeting with loyalist leaders in Belfast on Wednesday.
The Irish News carried a report and photographs of senior figures from the UDA and its political group, the Ulster Political Research Group, leaving the Wellington Park Hotel in south Belfast after privately meeting Dr McAleese.
Dr McAleese, with the quiet encouragement of the Government, has held several such meetings with senior loyalists and this is viewed as part of the careful outreach by Dublin to convince loyalists to abandon paramilitarism and criminality.
The North's political development minister, David Hanson, is engaged in a similar enterprise.
